Thursday, April 13, 2006

March Recruiting Statistics: Meeting (not Exceeding) the Standard

Army Times reports March 2006 recruiting statistics. This is the halfway point in the current recruiting (fiscal) year (October 2005-September 2006).

Active-duty Army: Goal: 5,200. Enlisted: 5,396. Percent: 104%

Army Reserve: Goal: 1,642. Enlisted: 1,518. Percent: 92%

National Guard: Goal: 6,540. Enlisted: 6,651. Percent: almost 102%

If you look at the size of our nation and what the College and Young Republicans describe as strong public support for our current military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, it's a bit disappointing that our Army is only slightly exceeding its monthly goals. Recruiters are clearly timing report dates so that they only slightly exceed the target.

We know nothing (yet) about the overall quality of the March cohort, or, in fact, anyone enlisted after October 2005, when Category IV recruits made up 12% of the accessions. [Yankee Sailor calls the October figure an outlier; we can only evaluate that when U.S. Army Recruiting Command releases complete data for the other five months of the current recruiting year.]

Are all recruiting categories of equal importance in our effort? No. That's why Army Times focused on the three I cited.

Seriously, I'm seeing some real denial from your perspective. Now that six retired generals have called for SecDef Rumsfeld's resignation [granted, why did they wait so long?], will you say that they hate America?